At a university garden, I came across these tulips backlit by the sun. And they grew in front of a deeply shaded background. Manual exposure and spot metering came to my rescue.
I needed quite a bit of depth of field because the flowers were different distances from the camera. With my lens set to 93mm, the depth of focus was further limited. So I set the aperture to f/16.
The flowers were swaying a bit in a gentle breeze, so I selected a shutter speed of 1/125 second to freeze their movement.
Using the spot meter, I measured the brightness of the tulips alone, without including the background. Because the blooms were yellow and very bright, I needed to increase their exposure from zero to +1. I did not want to change the aperture or the shutter speed, so I increased the ISO from 100 to 200 so the flowers would appear glowing in the final image.
If you want to take more control of your photos by mastering manual exposure, join me at the Lifelong Learning Center in Missoula, Montana, on Saturday, April 20, 2019. Click here to register.
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| 1/125 second, f/16, ISO 200, 93mm |
I needed quite a bit of depth of field because the flowers were different distances from the camera. With my lens set to 93mm, the depth of focus was further limited. So I set the aperture to f/16.
The flowers were swaying a bit in a gentle breeze, so I selected a shutter speed of 1/125 second to freeze their movement.
Using the spot meter, I measured the brightness of the tulips alone, without including the background. Because the blooms were yellow and very bright, I needed to increase their exposure from zero to +1. I did not want to change the aperture or the shutter speed, so I increased the ISO from 100 to 200 so the flowers would appear glowing in the final image.
If you want to take more control of your photos by mastering manual exposure, join me at the Lifelong Learning Center in Missoula, Montana, on Saturday, April 20, 2019. Click here to register.